How to get into Y Combinator according to the founders that did get in

After applying myself and not getting in for the S19 batch, I decided to do some research.

What if I just reached out to the founders that actually did get in, and just straight up ask them the nitty gritty questions of how they did it?

So I proceeded to do exactly that.

3 months later, countless hours of interviews, transcribing, and editing, I'm finally done.

https://www.growthmentor.com/blog/post_series/y-combinator/

There are 12 interviews live now but will be adding a few more over the next couple of weeks.

For anyone applying to this next batch, I wish you the best of luck.

Really hope this helps!

You know what would be 10x as useful as this AND account for survivorship bias? If you did this same format but instead only talking to founders who failed one or even multiple times before eventually getting in. Then they could compare and contrast what they did wrong originally and how they corrected it. That would be much more useful to me, and wouldn't stink of survivorship issues.

> How much time and effort did you put into the application?

Spent a whole week on it because the questions were really good and had to do a lot of thinking and research.

> Do you need traction to get into Y Combinator?

At its core, to get in YC you need an insight to build something that has the potential to be a $1B+ company. Having traction is great because it shows that this insight is grounded -- but this isn't required.

If you have no insight and no traction, then you need something else exceptional to convince them to invest in you rather than the idea.

> What are some tips for writing the written application?

Don't bullshit and get a founder from YC to review the application. Unlike most people, you don't need to "bullshit YC" to get in.. they actually want to fund you as long as you can prove that your insight is grounded and made significant progress relative to where you were a few weeks earlier. Also, be concise because they're reading thousands of applications.. if as the CEO you can't be concise, it's kind of a red flag against you that you won't communicate properly to customers, employees and investors.

> Bonus tips on how to get into Y Combinator

Don't read too much into "How to get into YC" things. Be ruthlessly focussed on working on your product and talking to users. Better to fail fast and move on to a different product if users don't love it or you're not solving a major pain point.

The article doesn't mention how they account for survivorship bias. Does anyone know?

Are the YC applications ever made public?

I am not really paranoid about 5-10 partners reviewing my application. But i would not want to be permanently google-able

On a related note: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20919455

Thanks for including Suiteness Foti, we are always happy to help other founders.

Many of the founders prepared in the ur chat where YC alumni payback by helping new one to shape theirs startups: https://openland.com/invite/wT6XDbT